This invention relates to instruments for applying surgical clips to body tissue, more particularly to instruments which at the same time store, dispense and crimp such clips.
Surgical or hemostatic clips are used to clamp off blood vessels or other tissue which are cut during surgery. Each clip has two legs which are placed about the tissue to be clamped. The clip applying instrument is used to squeeze the legs together to seal off the tissue. An operation may entail the use of twenty or more clips. Initially each clip to be applied had to be picked up by the jaws of the applying instrument from a separate clip cartridge or dispenser prior to each use. Later instruments, some of them disposable, incorporated the clip dispenser as part of the instrument. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,452,376, U.S. Pat. No. 4,509,518 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,712,549, the latter being assigned to the assignee of this invention.
In addition to the dispenser, the automatic dispensing instruments described above generally include a pair of jaws for receiving, holding and crimping a single clip at a time and a feeding means for feeding a clip from the dispenser to the jaws. The jaws and feeder are activated in proper sequence by an activating means usually including a pair of handles coupled mechanically to the feeder and jaws.
With instruments of this type, it is very important that the feel of the instrument is right for the surgeon, including the placement of the handles, smoothness of operation and the surgeon's perception of the jaws about the tissue to be crimped during operation. This can include several factors including good visibility and the perception that there is no relative movement between the jaws and the body of the instrument. For disposable instruments, cost is a factor but not at the expense of reliability. Improvements are constantly being sought in this type of instrument to obtain less cost, more simplicity, greater feel and high reliability.
It is an object of the present invention to provide all of the above in an automatic hemostatic clip applicator.